Discussion

I bet you are thinking, "Damn, that was the fastest 20 days ever..." No, dear patron... you have not experienced a time anomaly. Saran has not climbed out of the pages of her book to shift us two weeks forward... Inkshares is releasing your digital ebooks for download. That’s right. If you preordered 3 years ago, you are getting The Living God... today.

Print books will be mailed out in the next week or so. I’ll let you know as soon as I hear word of when they hit the mail.

Please remember to review on Goodreads and Amazon. Every review, even just marking the stars, helps. The goal is to get 60 reviews from backers! Can we do it? Can 60 of you review The Living God? I hope so. I’ve got faith in you.

We are so close to the publication date! Soon the book will be in your hands! FINALLY! This is super exciting and I cannot wait for you to get it. This brings me to an important part of this process...

If you have moved within the last 3 years, please login to Inkshares.com using the email address you used to pre-order the book and update your address. How do you do that?

Login to Inkshares.com. Click the righthand corner photo/icon. Select "Shipping Address" from the dropdown menu. Make sure the one they have on file is correct and if it isn’t, please update it. Save and you are SET!

I cannot thank you all enough for sticking around on this journey with me. It has been a whirlwind, dramatic, emotional, and crazy ride. Thank you for your patience, your encouragement, and your faith in me. I literally could not have done any of this without you all.

It has been a while, and so many great things have happened. Let me break them down.

Since getting bumped from Quill an Inkshares property, and getting all the wonderful benefits that come with that, The Living God went through several rounds of developmental edits. It has been copyedited, "poured" into book format, proofread, and had a brand new cover designed by Tim Barber of @dissectdesigns!

I don’t know about you, but I think it looks fantastic. I’ve gotten several compliments on it ranging from, "Its beautiful!" to "It looks like a NYT bestseller!" And while it may not be a NYT bestseller (yet, gotta keep the faith), it sure does make me feel like one!

The whole process has been a rollercoaster of emotions, mostly joyful. However, there is a change that I am sorry to inform you. The publisher has moved the release date to May. This is to better strategically place and market the book. While I’m bummed you won’t get it for a few more months, I understand their decision to do so.

These things take a lot longer than I ever anticipated when I started this process and when you pre-ordered in 2016. I want to thank you all again for believing in me and in this project, but especially for your patience. May will be here before you know it, I promise.

The Living God finished its 3rd round of dev edits a few weeks ago. I’m waiting to hear about next steps, I suspect it will go back through a copy edit. I’m also anxiously awaiting the new cover! I haven’t seen or heard anything yet.

In the meantime, while you await the release of the book in March 2019, I’m posting chapters of a book I started working on a while back before getting The Living God published took up a majority of my free time. It was my NaNoWriMo project for 2014! I dusted it off and I’m polishing it up for you. Check it out! Be sure to follow to get updates on new chapters.

Nina learned two things when she woke in Purgatory: Death was dead and she’d been there many times before.

With no one to usher the dead to their proper resting place, Nina has been trapped in a cycle of death and rebirth. Having burned through her allotted reincarnations, she must find a way to right the natural course of Purgatory, or risk fading out of existence forever.

I got notes that the download link didn’t work for some and that others didn’t get an update at all. If the download link didn’t work for you, please send me a message or email at kaytalinplatt@gmail.com.

If you are just receiving this update and have no idea what I’m talking about, I sent the raw manuscript out to supporters yesterday as a preview to the finished book. I you would like the raw manuscript and did no receive a download link, please follow the directions above!

I’m so excited to tell you that we have a release date of September 4th, 2018 for Inkshares backers and a public release date of September 25th, 2018, right before my birthday!

I know you all have waited a long time, but we are finally in the home stretch. I’ll give you more updates along the way. I’ll also finally be reaching out to those of you owed a promotional item. I’ve been holding off on them, because for a while there I grew concerned over whether the book would stay with Inkshares or not.

To be honest, there wasn’t a lot of communication from the staff once I turned the manuscript over, and I began to ponder other publishing options do to fear that the book may not see the light of day without another avenue. So, I held off on spending money on the promotional items when backers could inevitably be refunded their money. However, now that publication is secured and I’m receiving more communication from Inkshares, the concern of having to find a new publisher has been alleviated and I can now begin filling those promotional items promised.

I’m terribly sorry about being MIA. I’m sure some of you have been wondering where your promo items are, as well as the book.

The plan is for promo items to be out before Christmas. I know I promised sooner, but this year threw me a few curve balls that have been enormous stumbling blocks. The largest of all was my father being diagnosed with cancer. He ultimately passed away last month. It has been extremely difficult for me, as he was my buddy. But, each day I gather courage and strength to move forward and accomplish the goals I know he would have wanted for me to work towards. So, promos will be out before Christmas.

As far as the book goes, I’ll be honest… I’m not entirely sure what is going on with it. I sent an email out today asking if I could find out a status. I submitted it in July along with all the questionnaire information, but I haven’t really heard anything else about it. I know Inkshares has been swamped, so I didn’t want to be pushy. Once I hear anything, I’ll give you an update.

The manuscript is in Inkshares’ hands, delivered to them this past Monday! It is very exciting. From here, it is an estimated six months before it could be in your hands. So, that means you will either receive the book at the end of this year or very early next year! I’m sorry it took so long, but I wanted to make sure my beta readers could help me polish it up nicely for you.

I’ve already begun work on book two, and so far my go-to-beta is loving it. That has me super pumped.

Sidenote: Consider supporting Evan Graham and his book Proteus. He’s currently in the Nerdist publishing contest and in 4th place. He needs to get into 3rd in order to win the contest and get the full publishing deal, and potentially movie and tv rights. You’d be helping a really nice person who is super passionate about what he does.

About the book:Cyborg soldier Jacob Sicarius awakens early from stasis to find the crew of his multi-generational colony ship entrenched in civil war. Can he win the war against the mutineers and the malfunctioning AI implant fighting for control over his brain? Sounds cool right? Let’s help him when that contest!

This isn’t so much an update as it is offering an article I wrote to help authors better market themselves and their book. I know that there are a lot more authors on Inkshares who sponsored The Living God than there are readers. These are insider tips from a publication designer with seven years of experience but really pertain to people who are self-publishing. While Inkshares isn’t necessarily self-publishing, these tips can help you with marketing your book during the campaign.

If you qualified for a giveaway during Funding, I’ll be messaging you in the next month for your address so I can get that to you!

In the next two weeks, I’ll be passing the manuscript off to Inkshares for publication. That is exciting as well as terrifying. After I pass it off, it will be around 6 months before the novel is in your hands. I’m 11 chapters into the rewrite of the sequel, The Book of Kings. I’d share it with you but... spoilers. I’m not sure when to start sharing information on the second novel. I’d like for the first one to land in your hands before I start sharing chapters or synopsises for the next one, for obvious spoiler reasons. A lot happens towards the end of The Living God, and I wouldn’t want to ruin it for you.

I also noted a cool little thing at the top of The Living God page. It is the 16th best selling Fantasy book on Inkshares. Do you think we could get it in the Top 5 once it’s in print? Hmm...